Abdul mends nets in the day, after wak­ing early to tend to his fish. Good human­i­tar­ian aid works with peo­ple like Abdul, who seize opportunities.

Surely some of the excite­ment was just being able to hold the flop­ping carp for a moment. But the joy beam­ing across the face of a young fish­er­man was sin­cere. He and oth­ers had just pulled in their nets and revealed thou­sands of healthy fish, income for peo­ple who have strug­gled for so long. Once I learned the back-story behind this Bangladeshi fish­ing hole, and oth­ers like it, I was amazed to hear how it has come to be.

First, let me intro­duce you to Abdul. He lives in a Bangladesh farm­ing com­mu­nity where small vil­lage busi­nesses are set on stilts above rice pad­dies, and water­mel­ons are piled high on the side­walks. Here, it’s just as likely to travel by canoe as by car. Charm­ing in its own way, but still incred­i­bly poor.

Abdul has a large fam­ily; his wife and four of his girls were home when I vis­ited. He was unable to sup­port them on his mea­ger income as a rick­shaw dri­ver. No mat­ter if he worked eight hours a day — or 15 — he was still com­ing up short, and was not always able to pro­vide them with enough food. No edu­ca­tion for the girls. No sav­ings. Not even a mind­set of a future.

But about six years ago, Abdul was inter­ested in World Con­cern’s offer to begin a fish farm­ing busi­ness. He began receiv­ing — and repay­ing — loans for fish farm nets, feed and other sup­plies. And he got busy, mak­ing sure the fish had a healthy pond. He stuck to the plan. And it worked.

The fish grew, along with his con­fi­dence. He even­tu­ally was able to buy land for his fam­ily, and build a home. He makes and mends nets by hand. He saves at least $500 US every year, which is a tremen­dous amount of money in Bangladesh. In addi­tion to the money, World Con­cern has walked with him, teach­ing him about fish farm­ing and how to eth­i­cally run his small busi­ness.  Now, he is the dri­ving force behind this fish pond, one of many ponds in the area now able to sup­port fam­i­lies in sig­nif­i­cant ways.

That happy young fish­er­man I described at the begin­ning of this story is one of many who ben­e­fit from World Concern’s human­i­tar­ian work with Abdul and other entre­pre­neurs. Many men in the vil­lage now raise fish frys, pro­vid­ing the men with steady income. The wealth spreads. Good human­i­tar­ian aid works that way, in chang­ing the lives of not only one per­son, but in work­ing through that per­son to help oth­ers in the community.

Abdul is buy­ing cows now, build­ing wealth. Sit­ting in front of his home, with his fam­ily inside about ready to sit down for lunch, he grinned and told me he is blessed and grate­ful to have the chance to live a bet­ter life.

My ini­tial impres­sions of Bangladesh.

A teenage fish­er­man proudly holds his catch from a Bangladesh pond, a large carp that will mean income or a deli­cious dinner.

When the fish­er­men drag the nets into the shal­lows, the pond explodes with life. I’m sur­prised a fly­ing fish didn’t poke out my eye.

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